Description

A moving portrayal of loss, consolation and solidarity in a remote Mexican community

‘It seemed that even the jungle fell silent for a moment as if it wanted to help save a little child’

In the depths of the Mexican jungle, American traveller Gerard Gales is hunting for alligators, when he comes across a small village along the banks of the Huayalexco. Invited into the local community, Gales joins a huge party, held just across the river. But tragedy strikes when a young boy suddenly disappears into the pitch-dark night. As the villagers grapple with their loss, they come together in the face of life’s harshest realities, and something unspoken is born. A work of vivid description and radical empathy, Traven’s 1929 novel is a moving portrait of consolation and belonging in a remote indigenous community.

Publisher Review

B. Traven is coming to be recognized as one of the narrative masters of the twentieth century * New York Times Book Review * Traven’s philosophical anarchism, his disengagement, his scorn for regimentation and material goods and his love of individual liberty and the primitive past could, conceivably, command as much reverence form the new generation as does Henry David Thoreau * Los Angeles Times * He tells his story better than the best storytellers; delves deeper into characters than most so-called psychological writers. All the virility, terseness and tension that Hemingway worked so hard for…seem to be Traven’s by birthright * Books and Bookmen * Traven was above all a passionate defender of the victims of society, a man who hated injustice… His books were marvellous affirmations of his faith in the beaten man and his stories were permeated with a great and single-minded vision — John Huston